Scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam explains why COVID-19 cases must come down to zero, and how to get there
"When most people think about the future of COVID-19 in the United States, they’re unlikely to think about this: orphanages.
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dailykos.com/story/2021/10/…
"When most people think about the future of COVID-19 in the United States, they’re unlikely to think about this: orphanages.
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dailykos.com/story/2021/10/…
"People don’t remember the world as it was a hundred years ago,” said Yaneer Bar-Yam. “To live in that world, a world where orphans are common, and children dying is common, and the destruction of society is ongoing because of disease, is very hard for people to imagine.”
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"Bar-Yam is an expert in complex systems who has consulted on everything from how Wall Street can better handle market uncertainty to how the Navy integrates new defense concepts. But his greatest impact may be in the area of epidemic disease.
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"With social, political, and economic issues compounding the science of transmission and treatment, epidemics stretch the boundaries of complex systems. Finding the best way to deal with them can be extraordinarily difficult.
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"As Bar-Yam showed in a 2006 paper, a small change in one area—like incremental increases in international travel—can have a huge impact on the course of an epidemic.
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"In 2013, Bar-Yam played a key role in ending the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. In 2020, he founded EndCoronavirus.org to advocate for the best way to not just live with COVID-19, but to bring the pandemic to a real and definitive end.
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"On Tuesday, the scientist and activist spoke with Daily Kos about how the science behind complex systems, and the experiences of dealing with previous diseases, can be brought to bear in ending what is already the worst global pandemic in a century.
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"The answer isn’t so much “It takes a village” as it is treating the pandemic as if it’s made of villages.
"In talking about why he is so dedicated to the idea that COVID-19 has to be essentially eliminated rather than accepted as an endemic disease,..
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"In talking about why he is so dedicated to the idea that COVID-19 has to be essentially eliminated rather than accepted as an endemic disease,..
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"Bar-Yam was insistent that there’s little understanding of what it means to live with deadly disease as a constant of daily life.
“I lost an uncle to scarlet fever,” said Bar-Yam, “and a grandfather to typhus. That wasn’t that long ago.”
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“I lost an uncle to scarlet fever,” said Bar-Yam, “and a grandfather to typhus. That wasn’t that long ago.”
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"The modern expectation is that you can live your life without concern over contagious disease. People don’t worry about getting cholera from a glass of water or think about polio when they jump into the community pool.
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“What they know is this promise that they see from TV commercials. That you can take a trip, enjoy the beach, and come home—all without worrying that you pick up a virus and die from it.”
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"During the pandemic the US has already slid backward toward that plagued past. At least 1 in 500 children in the US have lost a caregiver
“One of the pieces of the picture being put forward is that the disease somehow becomes milder. They didn’t become milder 100 years ago
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“One of the pieces of the picture being put forward is that the disease somehow becomes milder. They didn’t become milder 100 years ago
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"This disease has all of the qualities of a disease that becomes more severe over time rather than milder. We’ve seen that through several generations of variants.”
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"Another word that rarely appears in discussion of what a future with COVID-19 might look like is disruption. Right now, schools, businesses, and sporting events are being suspended when large numbers of people become ill.
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"Continuing that into the future is asking for systems that are constantly delayed or derailed. The many businesses engaged in “knowledge work” can’t continue that work when someone with critical knowledge can go missing at any moment.
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And few businesses or schools can long continue when there’s a chance those critical resources are out for an extended period. A big part of the reason that the last century has seen such progress is simply that processes can continue without the disruption of disease.
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“We have this vision of a well-oiled machine. Everyone gets up in the morning and they go to work and go home, all with the assurance of safety”
Without that assurance, when sitting next to the wrong person at lunch can mean weeks in the hospital, the machine breaks down.
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Without that assurance, when sitting next to the wrong person at lunch can mean weeks in the hospital, the machine breaks down.
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"The idea that endemic COVID-19 will be a kinder, gentler COVID-19 is being sold to the public as part of a vision where the future looks much like it did before the pandemic began; one where everyone can go back to that beach trip dream.
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"But, Bar-Yam notes, that narrative is being “selectively presented” with the science “cherry-picked” to produce a story that’s reassuring. Which is exactly what the world doesn’t need.
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“In the context of uncertainty, you really want to act according to things that might hurt you the most rather than the things that might turn out for the best. If you’re walking along a cliff that might crumble, you change your course.
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"You don’t continue along the cliff edge saying ‘Well, it might not crumble.’ But that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
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"If endemic COVID-19 is unacceptable, the alternative is to fight for elimination of the disease. That doesn’t have to be extinction of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But it does have to be bringing cases of COVID-19 down to rare events in localized areas.
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